Areas of Unrest

2 March 2000 - Fred Abud Had Fifteen Camels

QOTD: "A man has to be a political idiot to say that power comes from the barrel of a gun when the other side has the guns." - Saul Alinsky

Reading: Joel Glenn Brenner, The Emperors of Chocolate

Listening to: Ofra Haza, Fifty Gates of Wisdom

I'm listening to Ofra Haza because she died last week and I heard a news story on NPR yesterday about the controversy over how Israeli officialdom has dealt with the cause of death being complications due to AIDS. Are they being sensitive to her family (who are very traditional, like most older generation Yemenites)? Or are they missing a real educational opportunity, akin to what Rock Hudson's death did in the U.S.? I understand both points of view, but I think the real question was what her wishes were if she made them known. Without knowing that, the discussion is pointless.

Anyway, every time I hear the song "Ayelet Chen" (which is on this album), I get fixated on some alternative lyrics that were popular at M.I.T. folk dancing some 20 years ago. They started out "a yellow hen, a purple cow, she asked me why, I asked her how" and deteriorated from there. The actual song was written by the Spanish Rabbi Shalom Shabazi in the 16th century and the translation starts out "Oh, Star of the Morning, In exile You will be my guiding light..." and rivals The Song of Songs in its religious love imagery. Ever since I learned that, I've wondered what the real words are for another Israeli dance, "Ya Abud." What we used to sing was:
Fred Abud had fifteen camels
Three of them knew calculus
Fred said it'll cost fifteen camels
Or else you'll have to take the bus
Fifteen camels, Fred Abud?
I wouldn't pay that if I could
Egged's got a cheaper rate
Even if you get there three days late
Push it off your plate if your mother serves pizza
She don't know it don't taste good
She don't know the law of the desert says
You can't serve pizza to Fred Abud

There's probably a lot more that I don't remember. I do remember a part at the end which ran "Walla Walla, Washington is not the place you want to be." I find it incredible that I can remember stuff like this, but I have trouble with my telephone number. By the way, in case you wondered, Egged is (was?) an Israeli bus company not exactly known for the quality of their service.

I can actually remember all sorts of strange odds and ends of song lyrics and poems. For example, thanks to my 10th grade social studies teacher, I will never forget "6 wives Henry VIII wedded, 1 died, 1 survived, 2 divorced, 2 beheaded." Nor can I forget that dubious classic of 2nd semester college Russian that ran (roughly transliterated) "Ivan sheptoot tainu v telefon, on shpion." Which means "Ivan whispered a secret on the telephone, he's a spy." Needless to say the only Russian phrases I remember that are even more useless are "zerkalo, zerkalo na stene, kto krasiviye vsex na zemla" which means "mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the most beautiful of all on earth" and "eto ptitsa, eto samolet, eto sverxchelovek" which is "it's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superman." I do not, however, know how to ask "how much does this cost?"

Though, I suppose you never can tell what vocabulary will be useful. Most of our first semester Russian stories had to do with the workers at a concrete factory. They all marched around chanting "beton, beton" ("concrete, concrete"). Good workers read "Young Concrete Worker" magazine and spent their spare time building hydroelectric power stations by the Great Blinsk Sea. But there were also uncultured loafers, smoking on trolleybuses, stealing pencils at the factory, and wasting their evenings at a jazz club on the shores of the Great Blinsk Swamp wearing tuxedos and shouting "cool, man, cool." A guy from our class went to Russia over winter break. He was understandably concerned about his limited vocabulary. His first day in Moscow, he met somebody who worked in a concrete factory.

I had a bunch of other stuff to write about, from the serious (ranting about the latest spate of gun violence) to the frivolous (my mild compulsion to see how long I can stand on one foot), from work (where we have some major shakeups in our program) to play (Long Beach storytellers last night). But I am in the throes of caffeine withdrawal and need to get some sleep, so I will just close with another phrase remembered from that same Russian class. Ya nenormaliya zhenshina. I'm an abnormal woman. Unlike the woman in that story, though, I do not sit under the table at fancy restaurants, smoking cigars and stealing everyone's shoes. I'm not that abnormal.